Multi-autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) cooperative localization has become a research hotspot in the marine navigation field. In this paper, a filtering algorithm for slave AUV with compass failure is proposed based on ‘two-master-one slave’ cooperative localization model. In this algorithm, the course angle is unknown, and non-Gaussian measurement noise caused by measurement outliers is considered. The cooperative localization model is reconstructed, and a filtering algorithm is derived whose performance will not be affected by the unknown course angle. Moreover, the maximum information potential (MIP) criterion is introduced into a recursive model to deal with the non-Gaussian measurement noise in a complicated underwater environment. Simultaneously, the kernel bandwidth is adaptively adjusted by the innovation matrix and the measurement error covariance matrix. The proposed algorithm can accurately estimate the variation of the unknown course angle without expanding the dimension of state under the condition of non-Gaussian measurement noise. Finally, the proposed algorithm is verified through field experiments. The results show that the proposed algorithm has higher accuracy and robustness than other existing algorithms.

Motion-planning algorithms play a vital role in attaining various levels of autonomy for any ground or flying agent. Three-dimensional (3D) motion-planning is interesting, but rather complex, especially for flying agents such as autonomous unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), due to the increased dimensionality of space and consideration of dynamical constraints for a feasible trajectory. Usually, in 3D path search problems, it is hard to avoid extra expanded nodes due to increased dimensionality with various available search options. Therefore, this paper discusses and implements a modified heuristic-based A* formalism that uses a truncation mechanism in order to eradicate the mentioned problem. In this formalism, the complete motion planning is divided into shortest path search problem and smooth trajectory generation. The shortest path search problem is subdivided into an initial naïve guess of the path and the truncation of the extra nodes. To find a naïve shortest path, a conventional two-dimensional (2D) A* algorithm is augmented for 3D space with six-sided search. This approach led to the inclusion of extra expanded nodes and, therefore, it is not the shortest one. Hence, a truncation algorithm is developed to further process this path in order to truncate the extra expanded nodes and then to shorten the path length. This new approach significantly reduces the path length and renders only those nodes that are obstacle-free. The latter is ensured using a collision detection algorithm during the truncation process. Subsequently, the nodes of this shortened path are used to generate a dynamically feasible and optimal trajectory for the quadrotor UAV. Optimal trajectory generation requires that the plant dynamics must be differentially flat. Therefore, the corresponding proof is presented to ensure generation of the optimal trajectory. This optimal trajectory minimizes the control effort and ensures longer endurance. Moreover, quadrotor model and controllers are derived as preliminaries, which are subsequently used to track the desired trajectory generated by the trajectory planner. Finally, results of numerical simulations which ultimately validate the theoretical developments are presented.

In this study, to cope with time-varying delay in acoustic communication under non-Gaussian noise caused by outliers, a novel robust delay filtering algorithm is proposed for cooperative localization of autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs). First, the modified measurement equations of the nonlinear cooperative location system with time-varying delay are derived, and the delay caused by the information processing and propagation of the underwater acoustic modem is converted into measurement bias. Second, to improve the robustness of the system with outliers caused by abnormal measurement values of underwater acoustic communication and Doppler velocity log (DVL), the statistical similarity measure (SSM) is introduced to construct the cost function. This is accomplished by quantifying the similarity between the state vector and the predicted state vector, similarity between the delay measurement, and modified predicted delay measurement. Finally, the modified measurement noise variance is obtained by maximizing the cost function, and two algorithms for the approximate solution of the nonlinear cost function are presented. The proposed robust delayed algorithm alleviates the impacts of delayed measurement with outliers on localization accuracy. The effectiveness and potential of the proposed filter are verified by lake trials.

A novel robust filter called a Huber M-estimation delay Kalman filter is proposed for a strapdown inertial navigation system/ultra-short baseline (SINS/USBL) integrated navigation system to deal with time-varying delay in underwater acoustic communication and simultaneously cope with non-Gaussian noises induced by outliers. First, considering the influence of platform error angle, an SINS/USBL integrated navigation system is constructed and, according to the delay characteristics of USBL acoustic communication, a delay system model based on state inversion is derived to deal with the time-varying observations. Second, a linear recursive model based on the delay system model is constructed to update the posterior estimation and covariance matrix by combining it with Huber’s M-estimation theory whose performance has robustness when encountering outliers. Simultaneously, a fixed-point iteration method is introduced to obtain optimal estimation. The proposed algorithm not only solves the time-varying delay problem but also prevents outliers in the process and measurement noises. Simulation and experimental results verify that the proposed filter has improved accuracy and robustness compared with other existing filters.

In this paper, adaptive noise estimation is used along with a previously proposed Huber-based robust algorithm for cooperative localisation of Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUVs). The Huber-based robust cooperative localisation algorithm named Huber-based Iterative Divided Difference Filtering (HIDDF), proposed in our previous work, effectively achieved a robust result against abnormal measurement noise, enhanced the stability of the filtering algorithm and improved the performance of cooperative localisation state estimation. However, its performance could be significantly further improved if it could estimate the system's noise statistical properties online in real time and then adaptively adjust the filtering gain matrix accordingly. In this paper, a novel adaptive noise estimation algorithm is proposed based on a covariance matching method. The proposed algorithm is suitable for adaptively estimating Gaussian and non-Gaussian measurement as well as process noise. The efficacy of the proposed algorithm has been verified through simulation results. In order to further verify the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm in practical systems, lake tests were conducted. Then, based on offline test data, the performance of the cooperative positioning algorithm under dual-pilot and single-pilot schemes was simulated. The advantages and feasibility of the algorithm are analysed and compared through performance comparison. Cooperative localisation accuracy of the previously proposed Huber-based robust algorithm has been enhanced significantly when used with the proposed adaptive noise estimation algorithm.